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would not you? One likes to go down the river with the tide, and if you can have a fair wind as well it is grand sailing: but surely, now, whenever you seek for souls you have wind and tide with you, for it is the day of salvation. God is saving men, it is his daily business, and his crowning glory, and he has set his heart on it; just as I remarked that Ahasuerus ordained a season of feasting and banqueted the people, and there is no doubt that they did feast at a royal rate, so when the infinite Jehovah proclaims a day of salvation the people shall be saved, and there shall be no question about it. Thousands upon thousands of erring ones shall repent and believe, and so shall be saved to the glory of his grace. Do not tell me that London is very wicked, I know it is; but the Lord has much people in this city, and he will redeem them from all iniquity. Our rural population may also be in many places perishing in gross darkness, but the Lord knoweth them that are his": he has jewels in yonder cottages, and he will make them to be his own. His chosen are hidden away in the dark mines of iniquity, but he will find out his gold and purify it. His everlasting purpose shall not fail, and his infinite pity shall not be stayed. Glory be to his blessed name, he will accomplish all his purposes, for this is a day of salvation, and his people shall be called to him by some means, by any means, by every means. They shall be brought up out of the horrible pit, and out of the miry clay; and they shall know that the Lord saveth not by might, nor by power, but by his Spirit.

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I think I have worked out that point sufficiently. day of salvation."

"Now is the

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I wonder whether anybody mistakes me. commonly call this year 1878 a year of grace. it is so. We say Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, and so it is; it is Jesus Christ's year. Any time between the first of January and the last of December in which you seek him, he will be found of you. Suppose you try it now. There cannot be a better hour. Here, where many have found him, consecrate that seat on which you sit. Dear brother, may the Holy Spirit help you to do so by now saying, "I would be reconciled to thee, my God, by the great Mediator: I would accept this salvation which thou hast freely set before me." I pray you do so.

III. To some of you I have spoken these many years, getting now into the twenty-fifth year, and shall I speak in vain? Our last word was to be something about A DARK CLOUD WHICH MAY DARKEN THE CLOSE OF THIS DAY OF SALVATION. I pray it may not, yet I fear it. My dread is lest you receive this great favour in vain, lest you live in this day of salvation and yet are lost. That will be for me a calamity, for I shall lose my labour; and more, there will be your mother's tears all lost, your father's prayers all lost, and your Sabbath school teacher's earnest instructions all lost, and other ministers' frequent invitations all gone for nothing. May it not be so, for that is unprofitable for you as well as for us. You will have lost all those Sabbaths, all those Bible readings, all those prickings of conscience. I know some of you are very attentive hearers and yet you have not found grace in this day of salvation. Salvation is all round you, yet you have it not. You have wasted golden opportunities. Ah, there

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will come a day when you will wish for another Sabbath but it will be denied you; your last sermon shall have been heard and your last warning shall have been received. Do not lose, I pray you, the privileges you enjoy of being born in a Christian land, of having an open Bible, of listening to an earnest ministry. Do not let those who never enjoyed such privileges have in the eternal world the start of you. not let Sodom and Gomorrah and Tyre and Sidon have to tell you that it is more tolerable for them in hell than for you. The Lord Jesus assures us that it will be so if you have been hearers of the gospel and lived in the day of salvation and received this grace in vain. The text says it is a day; and a day comes to an end. These are no words of mine, but the words of Scripture. "Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To-day if ye will hear his voice." Do you not see that the day of salvation, though it has lasted eighteen hundred years and more, is still a day, and will surely end? The opportunity of mercy lasts not for ever, let none deceive you as to that matter. The hope of grace will end with the day of grace; let not the smooth-tongued ministers of the devil who enter the pulpits of Christ now-a-days delude you as to any vain hope that another day of grace will come. I have no such flattering message to speak to you, but I speak as this Book teacheth. If you let this day of salvation pass, and if you glide into another world unsaved you are lost for ever. I know no more, but I know that this Bible so declareth it. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal." Do not indulge vain dreams. If the Lord speaks of a day, be sure that he hath limited the day; and if he declares this to be the day of salvation, you are not authorized to expect that another such period will ever come. "If he that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses" (listen to that): "of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God." Oh, yield to the Lord Jesus, accept his salvation, and trust him at once. I pray you in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-Isaiah xlix.

HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"-241, 239, 406.

MR. SPURGEON, having been obliged to leave home through ill health, entreats the prayers of his readers for his restoration. The sermons will continue to be published every week, and it would greatly cheer the preacher to see their circulation increased, which would soon be accomplished if those who profit by them would kindly introduce them to their friends.

FAMILY REFORMATION; OR, JACOB'S SECOND VISIT TO BETHEL.

Sermon

DELIVERED BY

C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"And God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to Beth-el, and dwell there."-Genesis

XXXV. 1.

THERE are critical times in most families: times when much decision of character will be needed on the part of the father to guide things aright. They say there is a skeleton in every house, and, if so, I would add that occasionally the unquiet spirit takes to troubling the household, and needs to be laid. There are times when the evil in the hearts of the children and in the nature of the parents becomes specially energetic, and brings about difficulties and perplexities, so that if a wrong turn were taken, the most fearful mischief would ensue; and yet, if there be grace in the hearts of some or all of the family, a strong and gracious hand at the helm of the ship may steer it right gallantly through the broken water, and bring it safely out of its dangers to pursue its journey much more happily in the future. Now, such a crisis had come to Jacob's family: things had reached a sad pass, and something must be done; everything seemed out of gear, and matters could not continue any longer as they were. All was out of order, and threatened to become much worse. Even the heathen outside began to smell the ill savour of Jacob's disorganized family, and the one alternative was-mend or end.

A stand must be taken by the head of the house. There must be a reform in the household, and a revival of religion throughout the whole family. If you notice, Jacob himself was in a bad way. His business was to remain in Canaan a mere sojourner, dwelling in tents, not one of the people, but moving about among them, testifying that he looked for "a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." He expected to inherit the land, but, for the time being, he was to be a stranger and a sojourner, as his fathers Abraham and Isaac had been. Yet at Succoth we read that he built booths-scarcely houses, I suppose, No. 1,395.

but more than tents. It was a compromise, and a compromise is often worse than a direct and overt disobedience of command. He dares not erect a house, but he builds a booth and thus shows his desire for a settled life; and though it is not ours to judge the purchase of land at Shechem, still it looks in the same direction. Jacob is endeavouring to find a resting-place where Abraham and Isaac had none. I will not speak too positively, but the patriarch's acts look as if he desired to find a house for himself, where he might rest and be on familiar terms with the inhabitants of the land. Now the Lord his God would not have it so. The chosen family was intended by the divine purpose to dwell alone and maintain a peculiar walk of separation. The seed of Abraham was ordained to be in the highest sense a Nonconformist tribe, a race of separatists. Their God meant them to be a distinct people, entirely severed from all the nation among whom they dwelt ; and so they must be, but the inclination to be like their neighbours was very manifest in Jacob's family.

The spell of Esau's greatness had no doubt affected the clan of Jacob: they had, from the patriarch himself down to the youngest child, made very willing obeisance before "my lord Esau," and the homage paid was not without its effect. That obeisance was an act which from some points of view we cannot condemn, but it was scarcely becoming in one who was a prince with God, and elect of the Most High, and its effect could not have been elevating. The sons seem to have taken very readily to paying homage to profane Esau, though they were not little children, but young men; they bowed before their noble looking uncle with his grand band of warriors, and were, perhaps, fascinated by the charms of so warlike a member of the family, whose sons were dukes and great ones in the land. It added importance to the shepherds to feel that they were related to a great captain. Now that they had come to Shechem, and their father had purchased a piece of land there, and had built booths, they felt themselves to be of some importance, and they must go visiting, for everybody loves society. And now comes the mischief of it. Jacob's only daughter must visit with the prince of the people. The daughter of Israel is invited to the dances and the assemblies of the upper circles of the land. It is winked at by the father, possibly, and the brothers aid and abet it. She is often away at the residence of Shechem, the fine young Hivite prince, a very respectable gentleman indeed, with mansion and estates; but there comes an ill matter of it, not to be mentioned. Then her brothers in their hot anger run into a sin that was quite as evil as Shechem's crime; by way of making some amends for their sister's defilement, with dastardly treachery they slay the whole of the Shechemites, and so bring the guilt of murder upon a family which ought to have been holiness unto the Lord.

Children of God cannot mix with the world without mischief. The world does hurt to us and we to it when once we begin to be of the world and like it. It is an ill-assorted match. Fire and water were never meant to be blended. The seed of the woman must not mix with the seed of the serpent. It was when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took of them as they pleased, that the deluge came and swept away the population of the earth. Abundant

evil comes of joining together what God has put asunder. The corpses of the Shechemites and the indignation of all who heard of the foul deed were the direct result of the attempt to blend Israel with Canaan. And now Jacob's household is filled with fear, and the old man himself -a grand man and a believer, but a long way off being perfect-cries out to his sons, in great distress, "Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house." To this his sons only replied, "Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot ?"-taking his rebuke in a rough fashion, and by no means showing any sense of shame. They do not appear to have been the worst of his sons, and yet their rage and cruelty were most terrible; and when they were charged with their crime they justified it. Wretched indeed was the condition of Jacob's household!

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That family was badly arranged from the very beginning. Polygamy needed not to be denounced in so many words in Scripture, because the specimens given of it are all so thoroughly bad that no one can doubt that the thing is radically vicious in its mildest form. It worked shockingly in the case of Jacob. His wife Rachel whom he loved so well had, I fear, been the cause of the introduction into the family of idolatry in the form of teraph, or symbol-worship. She had learned it of her father Laban, and secretly practised it; and if Jacob was almost aware of it he did not like to say anything to her, his darling, the queen of his soul. Those bright eyes which had charmed him years ago, how could he dim them with tears? The children of Leah took up their mother's cause, and the sons of the handmaids sided with each other, and this made trouble. The many mothers of the family created difficulties and complications of all sorts, so that the household was hard to arrange and keep in good going order. It was not what a believing household should be, and it is not wonderful that affairs so thoroughly went awry that it appeared as if even the salt was losing its savour, and the good seed was dying before it could be sown in the earth, and made to bring forth fruit. A stand must be made. Something behoves to be done, and Jacob must do it. The Lord comes in, and he speaks with Jacob, and since the good man's heart was sound towards God's statutes, the Lord had only to speak to him and he obeyed. He was pulled up short, and made to look at things, and set his house in order, and he did so with that resolution of character which comes out in Jacob when he is brought into a strait, but which at other times is not perceptible. We shall take up this incident at this time, and may God grant that we may find practical teaching in it for ourselves and for our families, by the guidance of his gracious Spirit.

Notice, first, God having appeared to Jacob, what was to be done? secondly, what happened in the doing of it? and thirdly, what followed thereon.

I. First, then, WHAT WAS TO BE DONE?

The first thing to do was to make a decided move. God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there." You must hasten away from Shechem, with its fertile plains, and make a mountain journey up to Bethel, and dwell there. You have been long enough near these

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